page_title: Sultanate of Singora
section_title: Destruction
hierarchical_section_title: Sultanate of Singora / History / Destruction
caption_attribution_description: English: The tomb of Sultan Sulaiman Shah, Singha Nakhon, Songkhla, Thailand
context_page_description: The Sultanate of Singora was a heavily fortified port city in southern Thailand and the precursor of the present-day town of Songkhla. It was founded in the early 17th century by a Persian, Dato Mogol, and flourished during the reign of his son, Sultan Sulaiman Shah. In 1680, after decades of conflict, the city was destroyed and abandoned; remains include forts, city walls, a Dutch cemetery and the tomb of Sultan Sulaiman Shah. An inscribed cannon from Singora bearing the seal of Sultan Sulaiman Shah is displayed next to the flagpole at the Royal Hospital Chelsea, London.
  The sultanate's history was documented in accounts, letters and journals written by British and Dutch East India Company traders; its destruction was discussed in books and reports authored by representatives of the French embassies to Siam in the mid 1680s. Sultan Sulaiman's family history has also been chronicled: Princess Sri Sulalai, a consort of King Rama II and mother of King Rama III, was descended from Sultan Sulaiman; present-day descendants include the 22nd Prime Minister of Thailand and a former Navy admiral.
context_section_description: In 1679 Ayuthaya mounted a final offensive to quash the Singora rebellion. Samuel Potts, a British East India Company trader based in Singora, recorded the city's preparations for war:
  This King has fortified his City, gunned his Forts upon the hills, making all the provision he can for his defence, not knowing how soon the King of Siam will oppose him.
  — Samuel Potts, Samuel Potts at Sangora to Richard Burnaby at Siam, 22 January 1679.
  In a letter dated August 1679 Potts informed his East India Company colleague that the Siamese fleet had arrived and stressed the impending danger. The events that followed were decisive: in 1680, after a siege lasting more than six months, Singora was destroyed and abandoned. Contemporary French sources document the city's destruction and provide a wealth of detail. The head of the French East India Company's operations in Ayuthaya described how Singora's "trés bonne citadelle" had been razed after a war of more than thirty years; a missionary working in Ayuthaya in the mid 1680s told how the King of Siam sent his finest ships to destroy the sultanate "de fond en comble" (from top to bottom). Simon de la Loubère, France's envoy to Siam in 1687, recounted a story about a French cannoneer who crept into the city one night and single-handedly captured the sultan:
  Some have upon this account informed me a thing, which in my opinion, will appear most incredible. 'Tis of a provincial named Cyprian, who is still at Surat in the French Company's Service, if he has not quitted it, or if he is not lately dead: the name of his Family I know not. Before his entrance into the Companies service, he had served some time in the King of Siam's Army in quality of Canoneer (...) Cyprian wearied with seeing the Armies in view, which attempted no persons life, determin'd one night to go alone to the Camp of the Rebels, and to fetch the King of Singor into his Tent. He took him indeed, and brought him to the Siamese General, and so terminated a War of above twenty years.
  — Simon de la Loubère, A New Historical Relation of the Kingdom of Siam, 1693.
  While Loubère's account of life in 17th-century Siam was well received by his contemporaries in France, the veracity of his tale about Cyprian and Singora's demise has been questioned. An article published in the Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland, for example, described it as "a story which might have passed in a romantic age, but it is too improbable for history". In a memo dated 1685 a French East India Company official claimed that Singora was finally captured by means of a ruse. Thailand's Ministry of Culture supports this version of events and discusses a spy who tricked his way into the city, enabling Siamese troops to enter and burn it to the ground.
caption: Remains of the Sultanate of Singora include  forts on and around Khao Daeng Mountain, a stretch of city walls, a Dutch cemetery and the tomb of Sultan Sulaiman Shah (shown above).
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